Procrastination rates and similarities among university students of Malaysia and Pakistan

Abstract

Procrastination is a widely noted global human problem affecting people from all spheres of life especially the academic one. Many studies have been done in Western and Individualistic countries but there is an evident lack of research in Asian and collectivistic countries such as Malaysia(MY) and Pakistan(PK). This study explored the prevalence of procrastination in university students of Malaysia and Pakistan as similarities between the two countries made the researchers believe that a very comparable distribution and rate of procrastination would be found from the two countries. The participants of this study were 200 students from two (one Malaysian, one Pakistani) universities. Tuckman's procrastination scale was used and it was found that participants from both countries had very similar percentage of students falling into different severity levels of procrastination. Moreover, it was found that there were no significant mean differences in terms of severity and prevalence in the two samples. The percentage of mild procrastination was found to be 19% in Pakistan (PK) to 21% in Malaysia (MY), moderate procrastination was found to be 70%(PK) to 67%(MY), whereas 11%(PK) to 12%(MY) of participants were found to be having severe procrastination. Further exploration of this phenomenon of procrastination in Asian and collectivistic milieu has been suggested. Moreover, procrastination could be studied more in the two countries concurrently owing to the similarities found in the current study. In addition, severe procrastination should be given more attention in the two countries as both have a sizeable number of students falling in this category.